


Restoration

by katling



Series: Nano Procrastination Fics 2019 [2]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Bucky hates HYDRA, Bucky's been keeping secrets, Civil War Team Iron Man, Even though we're very much post-CW, F/M, I'm sure you can guess what it is, Moderated due to trolls, Not Sam Wilson Friendly, Not Wanda Friendly, Post-Avengers: Endgame (Movie), Rhodey is done with everyone, Tony is all out of fucks to give, With a slight AU, but the point stands, not team Cap friendly
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-12
Updated: 2019-11-12
Packaged: 2021-01-29 09:09:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,655
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21407716
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/katling/pseuds/katling
Summary: On a mission back to a certain HYDRA bunker in Siberia, the new Captain America, Sam Wilson, and his team get one hell of a surprise. It causes upheavals both immediate and to come in the future.
Relationships: Pepper Potts/Tony Stark
Series: Nano Procrastination Fics 2019 [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1543279
Comments: 42
Kudos: 1608





	Restoration

**Author's Note:**

> Another nano procrastination fic, this one inspired by the prompt list used in the previous fic and from a couple of lines in the latest chapter of TheSovereigntyofReality's _Shocking_.
> 
> This is set a few years post Endgame so Tony's had time to properly recover and Steve has subsequently died of old age.

“I thought you were dead.”

The statement had been made by a very startled Sam Wilson and it brought the rest of his team crowding around him in the doorway. As each of them saw the man lounging in one of the chairs in the room, there were various gasps and shocked exclamations. Finally Sam stepped forward into the room properly and the team followed him, ranging themselves on either side. Directly to his right stood Bucky Barnes, whose expression was flat and guarded and just a little bit haunted. Beyond him stood a gaping Scott Lang and a composed but wary Hope Van Dyne. On Sam’s left, Wanda was glaring absolute daggers and he carefully placed one hand on Wanda’s shoulder. She had a tendency to be extremely volatile these days, since Vision had left to ‘find himself’ in the wake of his resurrection, and he didn’t want her starting something they would all regret.

“It’s not the first time people have thought that about me,” Tony Stark said idly as he tapped out a sequence into the old HYDRA computers. “You’d think they’d learn better.”

“But…” Scott said. “You died. We saw you die. We were at your funeral.”

“So I heard.” Tony wrinkled his nose. “Bit tacky and crude - even cruel - of most of you to turn up, especially since it was a private service and not a public memorial.” He paused and cocked his thoughtfully for a moment. “Then again, Carter turned up to my parents’ private memorial and I’ve recently found out she was directly involved in the cover up of their murders so I suppose there’s some precedent for it.”

The silence that fell after that statement was awkward to say the least. Scott and Hope were just confused but Bucky took a step backwards as he swallowed hard and Sam shifted the shield slung on his back just a fraction.

As if the movement of the shield had prompted him, Tony said, “Could you put that dinner plate on the floor and place your foot squarely on it? It’s just that the last time I was here, Rogers rammed that thing into my chest and nearly killed me. I’d feel a bit safer if it was on the floor.”

“What?” Sam said, blinking.

Now Tony turned to look at them. His gaze was intent and searching and very hard to meet, then he snorted and shook his head. “Why am I not surprised that Captain I Don’t Like It When My Teammates Keep Secrets From Me was a lying hypocrite to the day he drew his last breath.”

“He was a better man than you,” Wanda snapped.

Tony didn’t even bother to look at her. “You keep telling yourself that, HYDRA. You are, after all, very good at lying to yourself.”

Sam wanted to turn and look at Bucky when he heard the indrawn breath come from beside him but he couldn’t quite tear his eyes away from Stark.

“What?” Bucky snapped. “What do you mean HYDRA?”

Tony sighed and looked over at him with disdain. “Seriously? I am I the only one who ever does the reading? She was HYDRA, Barnes. Willingly volunteered for both HYDRA and to be experimented on by them. She’s not some poor innocent little waif in need of protection.” He grimaced. “You should see the training videos. What she does to the minds of the people she was honing her abilities on is nothing short of horrific.”

Sam didn’t even see Bucky move. Just that one second, Bucky was standing next to him, the next he was behind Wanda and dragging a knife across her throat. Chaos reigned for the next few seconds and when things calmed down, Wanda was dead on the floor and Bucky was standing in the far corner of the room, weapons in his hands. Scott and Hope were staring at both of them in shock and had shuffled several feet away from all of them. They looked on the verge of shrinking down and disappearing. For his part, Tony had finally stopped tapping away at the computers and was watching all of this with a sort of clinical disinterest.

“Huh, I didn’t expect that,” he said. He looked over at Bucky for a moment. “Was that you or the Soldier?”

Bucky licked his lips and didn’t move. “Both of us.”

Tony nodded. “Well, you won’t get any shit from me, though I’m guessing that you’re going to have some ‘splaining to do when you get back.”

“Wait… what?” Sam said as he looked between Tony and Bucky. “What Soldier? That’s Bucky.”

Tony snorted. “You mean, you actually believed that Wakanda had somehow managed to magically _cure_ him? As I’ve been told repeatedly by a neurosurgeon I know… the brain doesn’t work that way.”

Sam twitched. He’d heard those words from Dr Strange as part of a terse, disgusted explanation of why the man wanted to have nothing to do with the Avengers. The rest of the explanation had had a lot to do with Wanda.

“When did you know?” Bucky asked. He didn’t look offended, just curious.

“When I saw the footage from my funeral and your performance in a number of interviews,” Tony replied easily as though people talked about their own funerals every day. “And when I saw the footage from the public memorial on the one year anniversary. I mean, at first I thought the Wakandan treatment had turned you into a sociopath or something along those lines. I mean, you actually _showed up_ to my memorial, which, given everything, was wildly inappropriate. Then, in the interviews, you showed no sign of any remorse or regret for what you’d done while under HYDRA’s control. I gave some consideration to you just being like Rogers and not giving a shit about collateral damage and the people that you killed but that didn’t quite gel with some of the things you said and did and some of your expressions during the whole civil war shit show. You actually seemed to care about what you’d done back then. Then I saw you during the one year anniversary and you looked like shit.” He cocked his head slightly. “So when did the Wakandan treatment wear off?”

Bucky shifted slightly then he shrugged, as though he’d thought about lying but then decided he didn’t much care anymore. “About six months after the reversal of the Snap. The triggers are still gone but everything they did to… to suppress everything to do with HYDRA is back. Including the Soldier.”

“What?” Sam yelped. “Why didn’t you say anything?”

Bucky snorted. “And get locked up? I ain’t stupid, Wilson.” He looked over at Tony, a curious sort of regret on his face. “You’re right. I shouldn’t have been there at the funeral. None of us should have been.”

Tony gave him a small nod. “Better late then never, Barnes.

Sam was still caught up in a welter of emotions but one thing kept coming back to mind. “But… okay, putting that aside for the moment, how are you alive?”

Tony took a moment to type in a single line of code and then he turned to face them properly. He eyed them thoughtfully then he nodded to himself and tapped at the watch on his left wrist. It had clearly been projecting some sort of advanced holographic shield or mask because as it retreated back into the watch, the scarring left by his use of the Infinity Gauntlet was revealed. Yet despite the scarring, it was clear that he had full movement of his arm and hand and that the movement of his head wasn’t impaired either.

“Extremis,” he said simply. “I developed a muted form of it to assist with the surgery to remove the arc reactor.” He tapped his chest where the reactor had once been. “Then I deactivated it once the surgery was done.” He sighed and looked thoughtful. “But the deep trauma from using the Infinity Gauntlet must have reawakened it somehow. I’m not sure if I did actually die or whether I was just in some kind of deep hibernation. I’m inclined to think the latter since Extremis is just science, not any kind of mystical mumbo jumbo.” He suddenly looked amused. “Stephen was the first to notice it. He was indulging in some sort of existential despair over what he thought was my body several hours after the battle and he noticed I was actually still breathing. He’s said that the only reason he noticed was because he had gotten used to monitoring people in deep meditation.” He snorted. “I’m glad he did. Can you imagine what it would have been like to wake up in a coffin buried six feet under? Not that I would have since I’d long ago had it written in my will to be cremated.” He made a slightly alarmed face. “That could have been ugly.”

“So that’s why Ms Potts insisted on taking your body back to the cabin so quickly?” Scott blurted out before blushing and slinking back to almost hide behind Hope when everyone looked at him.

Tony just looked amused. “Yes. Stephen told her immediately, of course, and he was very helpful in covering things up for us.”

“But… why?” Sam said. He could hear the whine in his voice but he didn’t care right now.

“Because I’m done,” Tony said firmly. He held up his scarred hand. “I’ve done my bit for the universe as a whole. The rest is in your hands.” He sighed. “Of course, it’d be much easier to stay out of things if you lot didn’t keep screwing things up so spectacularly.” 

Sam sputtered indignantly. “We don’t…”

“Yes, you do.” Tony cut him off mercilessly. “The only reason you weren’t met by a brigade - or whatever - of soldiers at the door to this place once they realised you were on your way here is because Rhodey reached out to the Russian government and convinced them to let his ‘special operative’ in to deal with the problem.” He raised an eyebrow. “The problem being you and your continued insistence that you can trample over the sovereignty of other countries.”

Sam puffed out his chest. “We heard the Russians were going to reactivate this place.”

“So?” Tony said bluntly. “It’s their bunker in their country and its their place to do with what they want.”

“But…”

“But it’s HYDRA?” Tony said, raiding an eyebrow. “I know. So do the Russians. And so does the rest of the world. Because, you see, the Russians _weren’t_ planning on reactivating the place. They were planning on stripping it down, sending the computers and whatnot to Rhodey so that his ‘special operative’ could examine them and mine them for anything useful and then destroying the place.”

Sam gaped for a moment. “But… that’s not what Fury told us.”

Tony snorted derisively. “Yes, because Fury’s just _so_ trustworthy. The man didn’t even realise that HYDRA was operating under his nose.” He paused dramatically. “Or he did and he let them do whatever they wanted because it served his purposes.” He raised an eyebrow. “I mean, Fury and Natasha were supposed to be _the_ spies. Super spies even. And somehow they didn’t notice their organisation was riddled with HYDRA. I mean, either they’re the worst spies in history or they knew and didn’t care.” He cocked his head and smiled sardonically. “Or they were HYDRA. I mean, take your pick. Any way you go, they’re hardly people whose word you can trust.”

Sam’s mind was spinning but even through his shock, he heard the sound of a familiar suit landing outside and clumping its way along the corridor. After a moment, War Machine walked in and the face plate flipped back to reveal a very unimpressed looking Colonel Rhodes.

“Really, Tones?” he said with resigned and very affectionate exasperation. “I thought we said we were going to wait another six months before we revealed anything.”

Tony shrugged. “We were but they got here a bit quicker than we expected so… I had to roll with it.” He inclined his head towards Wanda’s body. “We had a slight complication.”

Rhodey looked down at Wanda and he grimaced. “Who did it?”

“Barnes,” Tony said, gesturing towards the man who was still standing warily across the room. “We were right about the Wakandan treatment.”

“You were right, you mean.” Rhodey looked over at Barnes for a moment, then turned back to Tony. “What do you want to do?”

“Barnes can come with me,” Tony said almost carelessly. “If anyone kicks up a stink about this, I’m pretty sure we can argue some sort of defensive reaction.” He raised an eyebrow and his voice was very dry when he continued, “It turns out Rogers lied to him as well.”

“Is there anyone he _didn’t_ lie to?” Rhodey said, equally dryly. He turned to Sam and his cohort. “Get on the jet and I’ll escort you back to the US. If you go now, Russia have agreed to look the other way, just this once. Come back again without their permission and they won’t be so lenient.” He gave them a significant look. “And we won’t bother to try and convince them otherwise.”

Sam wasn’t sure when the situation had slid entirely out of his control but he couldn’t deny that it had. He wanted to argue, he wanted to exert the authority of Captain America but these were two men who wouldn’t give a damn about that. He nodded slowly and gestured for Scott and Hope to leave. He turned around and headed out the door as well. Behind him, he heard Rhodes and Stark exchange a few more words then Rhodes was coming up behind him. He slowed until Rhodes caught up.

“You knew?” He tried to make it sound neutral but he failed. Rhodes didn’t seem to care about the accusation that had slipped into his tone.

“Of course,” he said with a shrug. “Me, Pepper, Happy, Stephen, Wong and Peter all know. And Morgan, of course.” He smiled slightly. “We brought Peter in after that mess in Europe with Beck.” He snorted. “What is it with people trying to blame their own screw ups on Tony?” He shot a sideways glance at Sam before smiling softly and shaking his head. “I thought the kid was never going to let Tones go. Then again, I wasn’t sure Tones was going to let the kid go either.”

Sam frowned. He remembered something in news about Spider-Man in Europe but it had faded out of the news cycle pretty quickly so he hadn’t paid it much mind. Maybe he should have. “So, what now?”

“Now, you’re going to go back to the Compound and try to remember that sovereign nations are to be respected,” Rhodes said dryly. “You might also try paying attention to what’s going on in the UN. The Accords aren’t dead, you know, and your actions are making it very difficult for us to knock any suggestions of a registration section on the head. So try and be a hero for once, instead of acting like a vigilante.”

Sam felt offended but from the look on Rhodes’ face, he didn’t want to hear it. “What about Stark?”

“What about him?” Rhodes said.

“He’s back.”

“He never went away,” Rhodes said with a small, private smile. “But if you want to know what he’s going to do next, keep your eyes on the news.” They’d reached the quinjet by now and Rhodes gestured peremptorily for him to get on board. “Straight back to the US. I’ll be following you.”

Sam did what he was told and as the jet took off, Hope at the controls, he began to think that the life he’d been living very comfortably was about to be shaken apart. He just didn’t know what to do about it.

**Author's Note:**

> Tony isn't going to hurt Bucky. He just doesn't want a Bucky/Soldier combo to end up in SHIELD's hands. Also he's kind of forgiven him. 
> 
> He is also completely out of fucks to give in regards to the Avengers. And the rest of the world for that matter. He nearly died saving the world. He thinks he's done enough but apparently he can't trust _some_ people to do things right. So, he intends to drag the Avengers, the world and anyone else that is necessary into the future he sees for them.
> 
> Also, I kind of envisage him noticing that the shield is surprisingly intact when he knew that it had been mostly shattered.


End file.
